I get your skepticism, but on the other hand I don't see the Jan Koums of the world throwing their money away, even if for PR. Acton is walking the talk, and it looks like his presence has meant some ex WhatsApp engs have joined him at Signal, too. What more could this man do?

> Facebooks blood money burning a hole in their conscience

Better late than never. Never seems more typical.

Which is why it is extremely important to have a solid 'business'model behind your FLOSS project.

To align sustained development and ongoing maintainance with a FLOS licence model.

Because the alternative is to have volunteers spending their evenings and weekends on hobby projects that sometimes grow way over their hobbyish status. Which is both scary and sad.

My guess was that it is a way of keeping the organization from failing the public support test (https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/exempt-organizatio...), which generally requires that at least 1/3 of the organization's support comes from the general public, not from, eg, one individual donor. Failing the public support test would make the foundation a private foundation instead of a public charity, which would change a number of regulations and have a small (usually 2%) on investment income.

What's particularly odd is that, if they were they a private foundation, as Acton is a board member (who also appears to have sole power to determine board members), I think the loan itself would be a prohibited act of self-dealing.

Might have also been an attempt to appear less of a target for that breed of self-serving administrators that seem to haunt certain other foundations in tech. And to keep reasonably humble people reasonably humble.